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My friend Rebecca Morean drops by for a visit today, with word of a return of her tales of two fascinating women of the early Twentieth Century—one of whom is a relation of… well, see for yourself.

–LRK

I was excited to sit down with Abbey Pen Baker, the great niece of Faye Martin Tullis for an interview. She very rarely grants interviews, but has such high respect for Laurie R. King, she immediately agreed. Faye Martin Tullis published books about Myrl Adler Norton all through the ‘20s, ‘30s and ‘40s. Her stories and monographs are all out of print now, but two decades ago Abbey found her great aunt’s famous roll top desk at the family farm in Vermont. Inside was a previously unpublished manuscript describing who Myrl’s real father was and the facts of the Myrl and Faye’s first case. In the Dead of Winter resulted in a flurry of questions and disbelief, but facts are facts. We met in a coffee shop in Yellow Springs, Ohio.

Myrl Adler Norton

Morean: What did you think when you found that manuscript? Did you have to get a family consensus to publish it?

Baker: I remember standing there holding that stack of old paper. The barn is right along the Connecticut River and it was a bright fall day. I started crying when I realized what it was. It was very emotional for all of us. Everyone in family knew Myrl had to be Sherlock Holmes’s daughter, but there was never any real hard proof. There was some talk of a DNA test, but really? Not happening.

Morean: A DNA test? With what?

Baker: There’s apparently some hair at 221b Baker street from a brush that was supposedly Sherlock’s and Aunt Faye kept a tooth of Myrl’s—Yeah, I know. Gross. But anyway, yes. I had the family vote on it and we searched for any of the Norton family to weigh in too, but couldn’t find anyone. We agreed to publish. And now I’m going through Faye’s monographs.

Morean: Why do you think these stories are compelling today?

Baker: It’s a sad truth that we are still dealing with the issues these two women grappled with. And I’m not just talking crime. I mean we still have murder and blackmail and intrigue. Good grief, look at the news. The first monograph, about complicity, focuses on the Mafia and this drug that was supposed to be non-addictive, “Heroin.” And yet people were becoming horribly addicted. Sound familiar? Look at the opioid epidemic today. And then there’s the whole women’s rights initiative, which is still going on. And race and class issues. It’s all there. Faye wrote about all of it.

Morean: While catching the bad guy.

Baker: Or not. I’ve read a lot of these now. And as I am editing, I am also pulling from Faye’s old journals and letters. Sometimes there is no perpetrator, or the perpetrator is really a victim of someone or something else.

Morean: Did you ever meet them? Myrl and Faye?

Baker: I have a vague memory of Aunt Faye. She’d come out to the farm and have dinner with us at Thanksgiving and over the holidays. But she died when I was nine. I hope to go the Norton house in Northampton this summer.

Morean: What would you say to aspiring writers or those trying to write biography?

Baker: Just do it. Do it because you have to. You have to tell these stories, and write like you don’t have a choice. And be a literary citizen: go to readings, buy books, support each other, go on retreats, respect your readers. Don’t put it off. There’s never a convenient time to carve out something for yourself. You don’t need money to write. Write a page a day and in a year you have a book.

Morean: Well. Thank you for your time. Just before you leave, can you talk about what you are working on now?

Baker: It’s another monograph about trust. That’s all I can say.

* *

For more information about Abbey Pen Baker and her ongoing series of monographs, go here, or see her on FB @abbeypenbakerwrites . Or enjoy her free monograph, “The Other Side of Scandal”, here.

All was quiet. Everything was blissfully mundane (save for the H.G Wells Time Machine sitting in the library aisle). Merrily climbed unsteadily from the machine, and hurried to the railing, where she peered down with breathless anticipation. She was light-headed with relief. Her desk sat in its pool of light, and her former self sat reading in gorgeous ignorance.

Wasn’t there a rule of time traveling declaring that one could not glimpse one’s future self?

Oh, stuff it, thought Merrily, this was reality—not theory and the Martian of letters had already arrived. Glowing parchment drew near. Merrily pushed down a wave of déjà vu, and ran for all she was worth. Unfortunately she was no marathon runner, but she took some consolation in the knowledge that she had worn her sensible shoes.

When she arrived, the inky cube was on the desk. Her former self was on her feet, utterly pale and speechless. The Savior’s long digit stretched towards the cube.

“Stop!” Merrily panted, racing towards her desk to snatch the cube. The Savior swirled with agitation, letters churned, becoming bold and black. At the sight, former Merrily fainted dead away, leaving her future self to continue the fight.

“I’m not a jailer. This is not a prison. It’s a library for God’s sake.”

The Savior grew, drifting menacingly near. Bold letters took shape before her eyes, encompassing her world, demanding her attention.

The minds are imprisoned. Release them now.

“They’re books, not minds. Humans like me, of flesh and bone, write them.”

They speak. They live.

“Yes, books speak, but our minds give them life. They live inside humankind. They are not prisoners, but an extension of ourselves.”

They are trapped.

“Not trapped…” Merrily faltered, grasping for explanations. In desperation, words came, tumbling from her lips, growing bolder by the moment. “Books are emotions, thoughts and dreams, everything terrible and beautiful. They contain all of humanity’s imaginings, flowing from people’s minds to their pens, and finally here, to paper. Every book is a masterpiece of dreams. This is their temple, and I am their caretaker.”

Silence answered—unspoken and unwritten. A minute passed, and then another, until the Savior stirred.

You are a protector of worlds?

“Uhm,” Merrily considered. It wasn’t precisely correct, but it was better than the alternative. “Yes, along with other librarians, especially considering what occurred…or might occur. And really, the books do not play well together at all. They are quite happy in their own, individual worlds. Trust me, we must keep them separated. At all costs.”

I understand. And accept. Farewell, Protector.

“To you as well, er…” Merrily faltered, and then raised her hand awkwardly, palm forward, offering the Martian a Vulcan salute. “Live long and prosper.”

The Savior vanished in a whirlpool of ink, and since the books had never been liberated, the Time Machine along with future Merrily, vanished. And an inky cube thundered to the floor.

**

Merrily stirred, blinking groggily at her surroundings. She rubbed her head, probing a knot in the back of her skull. She must have fallen asleep and then out of her chair. But what an odd dream.

After assuring herself that nothing was broken, she slowly pulled herself into her chair. A shape caught her attention. An inky black cube sat on the floor by her desk. She bent to pick it up, turning it this way and that, studying it with puzzled curiosity. It seemed familiar. Part of her dream, but surely it had been there before and inserted itself into her subconscious. Likely dropped by one of the students, she thought. Still, it was an odd thing, unaccountably heavy. With a slight shrug, she set the cube on a pile of loose papers, determining that it would make for an excellent paper weight.

(For parts I and II of Sabrina Flynn’s award-winning “Clash of the Books,” scroll down to the earlier posts, or wait until Tuesday for the entire story.)

III

“Your wife is certainly something.”

“Assuming this is her dream, I’m inclined to agree,” Holmes remarked drily.

“And if it’s not?” Kate enquired.

“I suggest we discover a way to undo the impossible. Books are your area of expertise, Madame, any suggestions?”

Merrily thought, chewing on her fingernails. Unfortunately none of the library’s safety drills had ever covered such an eventuality. Chaos reigned, the library smoldered, awash in a churning sea of smoke and blood. If only there were time to stop and think.

Time.

Her eyes widened in triumph.

“I need to get to the Science Fiction section.”

“And that is where?”

Merrily pointed across the library to the second floor, over carnage and war, to the realm of the Red Death. Its blood red funeral shroud flapped like wings in the wind. It strode with purpose, leaving a trail of writhing victims in its wake.

“Sherlock,” Kate said, taking stock of her ammunition. “You’re Victorian. You’ve had the most experience with plague. I suggest you deal with that thing.”

In the depths of striking grey, indignation warred with insult, culminating with an imperious glare. Kate’s heart skipped with fear as the Great Detective pinned her with the full force of his gaze.

“That thing is murdering people,” she defended. “I need you to stop the criminal while I escort the Librarian to Science Fiction.” Kate did not give him a chance to reply. Instead, she barreled ahead, pulling the Librarian behind her.

Sherlock Holmes glanced over the railing, checking on his wife, who was fiercely hog-tying the beast with salvaged rope from a banner. Deciding that Grendel had met his match, he grabbed an extinguisher from the fire station and raced after detective and librarian.

Swift and long-legged, he rejoined them in no time. Together, the three entered the realm of Red Death. Kate and Merrily pressed themselves against the shelving. Holmes edged forward, moving to the end of the aisle, glimpsing red between books. He puffed furiously on his pipe, creating a cloud of obscuring smoke that mingled with the Balrog’s hungry flame.

The Red Death strode blindly past. Holmes calmly unfolded his pocket knife, and hurled his blade at the floor, pinning a trailing funeral wrap with its deadly tip. The funeral wrapping began to unwind, exposing a carcass of rot and wiggling, sightless carrion. Holmes yanked the pin on the extinguisher, stepped into the aisle and compressed the lever, smothering Death with heavy foam. The Red Death stumbled.

Sherlock Holmes moved swiftly forward, driving the solid canister into the back of its rotting head. Death crumpled, buried in a mound of chemical foam.

Kate and Merrily raced from their cover, threading their way to desired section. Merrily ran a finger along the books, located the much sought after number, and pulled H.G Well’s Time Machine from the shelf. She tried to recall every Star Trek episode she had ever watched that dealt with the Space Time Continuum. While attempting to puzzle through the complexities of the situation, her head began to hurt, therefore, her plan was sure to work.

Merrily the Librarian opened the book, releasing words, transforming fiction to reality with a molten glow. An archaic machine of tubes and wires took form between shelves, shoving them aside.

Kate stepped forward, brandishing her badge to the puzzled Time Traveller. “SFPD, we need to commandeer your…” she faltered, then rallied, “time machine.”

(Stay tuned for tomorrow’s thrilling conclusion, in which the true heroism of librarians is revealed.)

(For part I of Sabrina Flynn’s award-winning “Clash of the Books,” scroll down to yesterday’s post, or wait until Tuesday for the entire story.)

II

“Run, you fools!”

A lash of flame descended with a sizzling snap. The detectives and librarian ran, taking cover in the Natural Sciences aisle. Black smoke gathered, writhing upwards. The building’s extensive sprinkler system surged to the defense. A deluge of cold rain charged the Balrog.

“This is not a dream, Inspector Martinelli,” Merrily trembled, “and you are not tripping, Mr. Holmes.”

“I should think not. I’m standing as we speak.”

“Wait,” Kate eyed the tall, immaculately dressed older man. “Mr Holmes? Are you another one of those Sherlock Holmes enthusiasts?”

“I am Sherlock Holmes, Madame.”

A rumbling interrupted the great debate. The marble floor erupted, throwing earth and crawling vine into the hordes of fiction. A massive beanstalk took root, grasping upwards with throbbing intensity. Sprouts attacked the sprinkler system, threading their disastrous way through piping and electrical circuits. The rain spluttered to a premature drip. Flame surged anew, licking hungrily at soggy bindings.

“My library is in ruins!” Merrily shrieked.

“Madame, when one’s nervous system is subjected to hallucinatory compounds, it is best to remain calm. The worst of the effects will wear off with time,” Holmes reasoned, and then narrowed his eyes at a line of goblins scrambling overhead. One paused, brandishing a maw of fangs. Holmes regarded it coolly, dismissed it from his mind, and pulled his pipe and tobacco pouch from his pocket. When the creature persisted, Kate pointed her gun, and fired, dropping goblin to the floor at their feet. The rest scattered like flies.

“I will not calm myself, Mr. Holmes,” Merrily growled. “That light-alien has destroyed my library, and the Red Death is killing my favorite characters.” As the words left her lips, the Red Death swept through the raging tide of battle, touching foes at random. His hand fell upon a gentlewoman and her dark-haired defender, sending them writhing to the floor. “He’s just murdered Mr Darcy and Miss Bennet!” Merrily nearly fainted.

A slice of flame sizzled overhead, halving the shelves an inch above Holmes’ greying hair. The three were buried in a mound of smoldering paper and blackened bindings.

“If this is a dream,” Kate coughed, “then it’s a painful one.”

Holmes pushed the books aside, ripped a burning page from Twilight, then used it as tinder to light his pipe, before throwing the book at a troublesome faerie. Book smacked into faerie, sending both spiraling to the ground. Holmes, Martinelli, and the librarian moved to a safer aisle, past religious studies, through horror, and onto mystery.

“I’m not so sure this is a dream anymore,” Kate said.

“It is lunacy,” Holmes deduced.

“Look,” Merrily interjected, “humor me for a moment and let us pretend this is an intellectual exercise. How do you propose to stop this?”

“They are your books, Madame,” murmured Holmes around the stem of his pipe. “I suggest you restore order.”

“Some help would be appreciated.”

A brute of scale and claw slammed into the end of the shelves. Metal gave, books flew, pages opened, and fiction grew.

“What precisely do you expect us to do?”

Merrily never had the chance to answer, nor did she have an idea, for a tall, blond-haired woman darted past, skidded, and reversed course, diving into their aisle. A massive claw swiped the space she had vacated. A mouth of rot appeared in its stead, bellowing frustration, and hammering at the shelving. Kate fired her gun, bullets bounced off the brute’s armor, ricocheting off stone and zipping dangerously close to their heads.

“Russell!”

“Holmes,” the blue-eyed new arrival gasped, “what on earth did you slip into my drink?”

“I did nothing of the sort. You’re supposed to be in Los Angeles.”

“Have you gone mad? We were celebrating the New Year in Sussex.”

“Run!” Merrily screamed. The armored brute tore the shelving off its foundations, and the four darted, scrambling up the spiraling metal stair.

“Who’s she?” asked Kate.

“My wife.”

“This is the wife you mentioned in your manuscript?” Kate eyed the younger woman appreciatively.

“Mary Russell.”

“Kate Martinelli.”

The two women shook hands. The Librarian prayed, and the Great Detective smoked his pipe in thought.

“You’re on fire, Holmes.”

“Since this is a dream, it does not bear consideration.” Two seconds later, Holmes cursed in pain, and batted at the flames on his coat. “Perhaps not,” he conceded with a grimace.

“What was that light-creature near your desk?”

“I think it was an alien,” Merrily replied.

“Of no nationality I recognize.”

“No, not that kind. An alien of the Martian variety. It called me a jailer. And I’m certainly not a jailer, I’m a librarian.”

The armored brute roared, rolling a blood shot eye at the four. The other orb bled from where a familiar knife had pricked its eye. Its roar seized their hearts. The four moved rapidly down the aisles along the second floor, catching glimpses of a blackened husk battling a sword wielding wizard.

“I seem to have attracted the attention of a beast resembling Grendel,” Mary Russell confided as they raced down the stacks.

“Perhaps you should not have thrown your knife at its eye, Russell.”

“I gave fair warning, Holmes.”

They stopped, breathless, huddling in Art History.

“These are characters from the stack of fiction books that were sitting on my desk.”

“We are not fictional,” Holmes and Russell snapped as one.

“Fiction or non-fiction, your admirer is tearing the floor apart.”

“Since this is a dream, presumably mine, I refuse to be intimidated by a myth,” Mary Russell declared, planting her boots firmly on the grate. “I’ll distract Grendel, Holmes, while you and these ladies figure out how to stop this madness.” She drove her elbow into a fire emergency station, yanking the shiny red axe from its resting place. “There is only one way to deal with a Grendel.” As quickly as she had appeared, the lanky blond darted towards the railing, disappearing over its side with axe in hand.

“Your wife is certainly something.”

“Assuming this is her dream, I’m inclined to agree,” Holmes remarked drily.

(Tomorrow: Part Three, in which Merrily chews her fingernails and Chaos reigns.)

Every year we run a contest celebrating National Library Week, asking readers to talk about their love for libraries. This year I posed the challenge of explaining what “library” means, to someone like a Martian—and said that there would be extra points if the essay/poem/etc mentioned Kate Martinelli, whose 20th anniversary 2013 is.

I loved all your entries, which were without exception heartfelt, affectionate, appreciative expressions of Library Love. But I only had one prize—a set of all five Martinelli novels—and so I had to choose one. And here it is: Sabrina Flynn’s “Clash of the Books.”

Because it’s a nice and long, I’ve divided it into four episodes, which you can read today, tomorrow, Monday, and Tuesday. After that, I’ll put a pdf of the entire story on the web site for a while, with Sabrina’s blessing.

Enjoy—and as you read, you can be planning your own entry into next year’s Library contest, when Mary Russell turns 20!

—Laurie

Clash of the Books

by Sabrina Flynn

With the editorial eye of Merrily the (presently retired) Librarian

I

A Presence drifted beside the moon, puzzling over the unknown. Its thoughts spiraled along the stars, plunging down a luminescent waterfall. Far below, the starlight pooled, gathering around a solid stone building. It seemed a cage.

The Presence seeped through the cracks in the stone. Its thoughts explored the prisoners who stood upright in dark holding cells. Their spines were straight, one pressing against the next in cold, multitiered prison blocks. The hush was tangible, a silence that could be heard, filled with a million minds whispering of their lives before imprisonment. This could not be endured. A Savior descended, bearing the key to their freedom. Liberation was nigh.

**

A curly-haired woman sat at her desk. She had remained after hours to work, but in actuality, she was reading, surrounded by a warm pool of light. The lapel of her stylish coat bore a tag, proclaiming her as Merrily the Librarian. She turned a page in her book, absorbed in a world of detectives and murder.

An irritating light niggled at the edges of her vision. The intrusion grew persistent, growing brighter until it blurred the pages. Merrily glanced up, severing the connection between mind and word.

A figure approached. Man or woman, she did not know, human or animal, she could not say. Its skin glowed like sun through parchment, its veins were elegant letters that swirled beneath the light, from runes to hieroglyphs, of every language ever spoken and those yet born.

Merrily’s mouth fell open. The book slipped from her numb fingertips, tumbling onto the floor. The being of light extended an arm, long fingers uncurled, revealing an inky cube in the palm of its ever changing hand. Letters drifted into the space between librarian and figure, shifting to form words, rearranging into comprehension.

I have come to free the prisoners. Do not interfere, Jailer, for I am their Savior.

Merrily recovered the use of her legs, but not her lips. She bolted to her feet, knocking a cart of books over, scattering their bindings across the floor.

The Savior placed the inky cube on the desk, and tapped its top with a long finger that ended with a dot. The cube cracked into a thousand splintering lines of molten gold.

Pages fluttered, shelves shook, the library shuddered. Letters rose from the pages of print with tornado like force. Merrily retreated from the alphabetic cyclone, tripped over the scattered books, and fell to the floor.

The churning letters took shape over the open book she had been reading. Two figures emerged from The Art of Detection. One was tall and lean and decidedly male. The other was short and athletic and most assuredly female.

“What the devil?” the first demanded. Undaunted by the winds, he swept a steely gaze over the cavernous stacks, and finally pinned the Savior with steadfast skepticism. Sherlock Holmes concluded that someone had introduced a hallucinatory element into his champagne at the dance hall.

Kate Martinelli spotted an immediate threat, placed herself between the terrified woman on the floor and the towering lunatic of light, and drew her gun.

“Inspector Martinelli, SFPD. Put your hands up!”

The figure did not move. Holmes glanced between policewoman and illusion, and calmly moved to assist the fallen librarian to her feet.

Wind battered the three. A raven flew from between the pages of another book, croaking, “Nevermore!” A herald of chaos followed by a mélange of fiction.

Out stepped the Red Death in all his glorious tatters. The armies of Agincourt washed over the main floor like a ferocious tide. Goblins swarmed, and hobbits scattered. A pillar of shadow and flame raged between the stacks, and a grey-bearded man in pointy hat skidded to a stop.

My friend Rhys Bowen has a new book! Rhys has been a buddy since, well, for a long time now, and since we’re both in the Northern California area, we see each other occasionally. Although how Rhys has time to do anything but bend over her keyboard, I can’t think—she publishes at least fifteen books a year (well, minor exaggeration) in three sparkling series. I invited her here to chat with you about Lady Georgie, penniless but 34th in line to the throne of England.

I’m so delighted to be a guest on Laurie’s mutterings this week as we each celebrated the birth of a new child last week. Not a flesh and blood child but a new book. Naughty in Nice, my latest Royal Spyness mystery came out on the same day as Laurie’s Pirate King.

Also by strange coincidence, we share similar heroines—young women from the early part of the Twentieth Century who find themselves part of the man’s world of sleuthing. I write two series with early Twentieth Century female sleuths and I am always getting emails telling me that my heroine could not possibly do the things I have her do in my stories.

Of course I am always delighted to prove them wrong. Even at the turn of the century, when my Molly Murphy books take place and women wore corsets, bustles, enormous hats with birds in them and were prone to swooning, they were not the delicate females that history would have us believe. Of course history is written by men. Their ideal of womanhood was a dainty little thing who blushed at the mention of the word “leg”, would not dream of showing an ankle and deferred to her lord and master in all things.

When typewriters were first invented, their operators, also called typewriters in those days, were all men. It was claimed that the action of striking the keys was too strenuous for young females. The real reason was that typewriting was a well paid job and men wanted to keep it to themselves. Those same females were bearing and raising great broods of children, washing clothes in tubs, beating carpets on the line with no apparent difficulty. They were also crossing the continent behind wagon trains, pausing only to bury their dead children and husbands along the way, before building new homes in the wilderness. They were incredibly tough and resilient.

So we know that women were strong enough to be detectives. The question is whether men would allow them and take them seriously. The truth is that women were doing absolutely everything, from traveling to the North Pole to discovering radium. In my Molly Murphy books we meet several real life women: Mrs. Goodwin was the first female detective on the NYPD. Nelly Bly was an investigative reporter who put herself in considerable danger, having herself committed to an insane asylum to report on conditions there.

By the thirties, when my Lady Georgiana is sleuthing, women were doing amazing feats. In England Amy Johnson was flying solo from England to Australia—the first person, male or female to do so, in a tiny plane literally made of paper and string. Young women from good families had volunteered as nurses during World War 1 and had to deal with unspeakable horrors in the hospitals there. They worked in munitions factories and drove ambulances. By the thirties they were racing cars, flying planes and generally doing whatever a man could do.

So women have always been tough. My heroine of Naughty in Nice, Lady Georgie, brought up in the rarified atmosphere of royal circles, isn’t afraid of much and has come through some pretty tricky situations. I have a feeling her stay on the Riviera will be no relaxing holiday….

So hooray for writers like Laurie and myself, for telling the HERSTORY as it really was.

One week to pub date, which makes this a bonus day: I also have a post over at the Poisoned Pen Bookstore’s blog, talking about Russell & Holmes, Gilbert & Sullivan, and hitting a series’ reset button. Join me here.

We then went on to the Church of St. Peter in Lew Trenchard just next door, which is small and lovely.

W.S. Baring-Gould, grandson of SBG, compiled the first annotation of the complete Holmes that I ever owned. On his account I took a picture of the memorial plaque to another William B-G. In the old and peaceful churchyard the Baring-Gould couple is buried, with two daughters nearby and a grave marker or possibly a memorial stone commemorating a third.

The staff ladies had not known Margaret (aka Daisy) B-G painted the pictures in the Virtues “sitting room.” Another considerate soul, the warden in the church, told me Daisy painted the rood screen pictures. Not a one of these ladies knew about the MOOR and they were very interested; the church warden wrote it down carefully.

At this point I would have accounted my May trip as a resounding success if everything else had gone pear-shaped, as one niece has taught me to say. We went on our way with repeated thanks for our guides. Amusingly enough, we females collectively got so excited that I headed out of the hotel without paying for tea and had to go back.

If I had it all to do over again, here’s what I’d do: per my fellow investigators, there is a resident historian, and I’d make an appointment with him. I’d bring flowers for the graves. I would take more pictures (and more slowly and evenly). My true preference would be to stay as a party of four or more hard-core Russellians. My word, what a good time we would have.

In our Dartmoor voyage we also hit Postbridge and Widdecombe. As our final flourish we made it to the Hound Tor. I was impressed with myself that I climbed up the entire Hound Tor except the very top rocky bit. By request, Dave did his impression of The Man on the Tor. The views were spectacular and so was the wind.

Fortunately after all this I had a day or so to rest up. So much for the Hounds, on to London for the Lords!